The Cholera Map by John Snow (London, 1854). A Health Solution as a Conceptual Summary of Applied Geography

BUZAI, GUSTAVO

Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina

Sociedad Científica Argentina

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2020 vol. 268 p. 5 - 18

0037-8437

Although Geography was defined as a human science in the late nineteenth century with the book Antropogeogaphie. Grundzüge der Anwendung der Erdkunde auf die Geschichte (1882) by Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), the study that relates it to Medicine and population?s health is systematized the previous century in the book Versuch iener allgemeinen medicinisch- praktischen Geographie (1792) by Leonhard Ludwing Finke (1747-1837). It is in this initial contribution that the term Medical Geography is proposed as a field that studies the spatial distribution and transmission of diseases.The map created by Doctor John Snow (1813-1858), in which he represented the deaths caused by the cholera epidemic in London in 1854 along with the spatial distribution of water pumps, is an important example in this line of studies. It was used illustratively in his book On the Mode of Communication of Cholera (1855) to support the hypothesis of contagion by water (bacteriological perspective) and, from a spatial perspective, it presents many important concepts as a conceptual summary of Applied Geography.This paper analyzes the map as a tool for decision-making focused on the conceptualaspects that prevail at present.